Welcome to episode 230 of the GTO on 5G. It's
the latest Insight Scoop on everything 5G. We
cover six topics in about 20 minutes, and it's
brought to you by More Insights and Strategy.
I'm Will Townsend, and joining me again this
week is fellow analyst Anshul Saag. Let's get
started with my first topic. It's a gratuitous
plug for something that I did this week, but
I had an opportunity to speak with AT &T's network
CTO, Egal Abez. I've known Egal for almost 10
years now. And we spoke in support of the TM
Forum. So the TM Forum held its Ignite conference
in Copenhagen about a week ago. And Igal and
I sat down for a fireside chat to talk about
autonomous networks. If you're interested, you
can hit my social media channels to actually
watch the video. But the TM Forum is focused
on three objectives. One, enabling autonomous
networks. Also driving composable IT infrastructure
and ecosystems. and also AI and data. And so
from my perspective, what we focused on was AT
&T's contributions to the TM Forum. So the TM
Forum has working groups that are focused on
this. And they use the analogy that's similar
to autonomous vehicles and autonomous cars. So
various levels of autonomy. Egal and I talked
about AT &T's contributions. what the TM form
is doing to drive standardization around this.
And Igal and I also talked about within his organization,
what they're doing with generative and agentic
AI to provide automation to the network layer.
Because ultimately, I believe the power of agentic
AI is in its ability to facilitate automation
on a very wide scale. So this is late breaking.
The video actually just dropped today. But again,
I encourage our viewers and listeners to go take
a look at that. Anshul, you and I have talked
about AT &T. They have been focused on programmability.
They're partnered with Ericsson to do that. They're
exposing APIs. They're doing a lot of different
things. What do you think about the promise of
autonomous networks? Are we actually going to
see it within the next couple of years? I think
it's an evolution of AT &T was leading the charge
with software defined networks. And I was curious
about where they were going to go with it. And
I also think that autonomous networks are going
to be necessary for 6G. So I think we're in a
place where we want people to explore these concepts
and develop them early because once the capabilities
are there and the sensing, I think there's going
to be a lot of opportunities to leverage these
autonomous networks to preemptively. build in
capabilities as the network evolves. Because
the thing is, the networks are going to have
to be constantly changing and adapting. And that
complexity will only increase with 6G and AI.
No, I totally agree. And we've talked about Nokia
on prior podcasts as well. They have an autonomous
networks platform. So this isn't specific to
Ericsson or the TM Forum. But from my perspective,
organizations like the TM Forum are critical
in bringing ecosystems together. to drive innovation
and faster time to market and that sort of thing.
We'll keep it brief on that topic. But again,
I encourage our viewers and listeners to go hit
my social media channels if you want to learn
more about that. But let's go to your first topic.
And you want to talk about the big, beautiful
bill. And there's a lot in it. I recently did
some research and it's the sunsetting of EV credits.
And there are a lot of other aspects to it. But
for the purposes of our podcast, you want to
talk about what it might mean. for the future
of 5g and 6g yes first of all the fcc finally
gets their spectrum auction authority back which
is something that has long been not done and
overlooked for some reason there is In the version
that passed today, because this is the final
reconciliation bill from the Senate back to the
House, because the House sends it up to the Senate,
then the Senate has their own version, then they
reconcile and then they send it back down to
the House. The reconciled version, which was
going to go to Trump, once Trump signs it, it's
law, which I think he most likely will. I don't
really see there being anything that he really
balks at. I think that there's... some interesting
things about spectrum so there was a lot of talk
that they might find because they were talking
about 800 megahertz of spectrum here in the bill
that i'm reading at congress .gov in the 4000
section which is where all this science technology
and transportation stuff is the big things that
are being mentioned are there's 500 megahertz
and three and 300 megahertz of spectrum which
totals 800. it's very nebulous about where the
spectrum will come from so that's not very clear
yet but there are minimums that a minimum of
200 megahertz needs to be found after two years
and then more spectrum needs to be founded for
four years additionally there's also provisions
to kill The remaining funding from the CHIPS
Act, there was $850 million for semiconductor
supply chains for specific 5G, 6G technologies.
That $850 million is being rescinded because
if it was not allocated, it's being rescinded.
And then there's some other things that are going
to be relevant in terms of like... Energy, there's
going to be a lot of challenges, I believe, in
long term with some of these green energy things
that are being rescinded. Specifically on nuclear
energy, there are some nuclear energy credits
that are going to be rescinded, which I think
is a mistake because so much of AI is going to
be dependent on power and going backwards in
terms of energy consumption because the truth
is that a lot of the green stuff has been...
good for business. And I think the nuclear stuff,
especially, I think there are some definitely
challenges that are going to happen down the
road with power. But other than that, the big
ones are really that they get their authority
back and that their spectrum, there was some
talk about open RAN as well, but I don't see
any of that in the bill. So I'm not going to.
comment on that, but there was definitely some
talk that open RAN might lose its grants because
it's not relevant to the current administration,
but I don't see anything in the bill. I looked
for RAN and open RAN and all kinds of stuff in
the bill. I didn't see it. It's a very long bill.
It's HR1, which is technically the first bill
for the house. It is many pages. Control F is
a powerful tool and it's the official text. So
I'm going by that. Yeah, man, so I haven't dove
into, obviously, as deeply as you have. I'm really
surprised that Open RAN isn't a priority for
Trump's second administration, just given all
of the focus, like when he was in office in his
first term, around domesticating the telecom
supply chain, the rip and replace of Huawei out
of rural America. So I find that really surprising.
That's not in it. But this is a monster bill
to your point. It includes everything but the
kitchen sink. It's no exaggeration that it's
big. It cuts to Medicaid too. Yeah. But yeah,
that's interesting. It will be interesting to
see once it's signed. You and I should drill
through it again and determine what the implications
are for telecommunications in general. But hey,
I'm going to continue that same theme with my
second topic. And I want to talk about Orange
and Samsung. And they're teaming up for a virtualized
RAN deployment in France. And VRAN and Open RAN
deployments continue over in Europe. Vodafone
is embracing Open RAN quite a bit. A lot of proof
of concepts. We're beginning to see some actual
commercial deployments of it. But I found this
interesting. So at a high level, and the city
is unnamed, but it's somewhere in southwest France.
There was an article on Light Reading that basically
highlighted the fact that both companies are
completing the first 4G and 5G calls on a pilot
Orange network that ran on Samsung's VRAN technology.
Triple band radios, the spectrum profile is 3
.5 gigahertz. They're using massive MIMO technology,
no surprise. And from my perspective, again,
Samsung is a leader in virtualized RAN. That,
you know, the RAND market, you and I have talked
about this on several podcasts. That was the
first out of the gate with these non -standalone
deployments and then core to follow to get to
standalone. So the RAND market has stalled. Certainly
all of the RAND solution providers, Nokia, Ericsson,
and Samsung networks have experienced dips in
that category. While it's hard to understand
what's real and what's not for obvious reasons
there. But virtualized RAN, it's a highly efficient,
it is a CapEx light approach to deployment. And
especially when you look at the European market,
where there's a lot of RAN sharing that goes
on, we don't have that in the United States.
It's an opportunity, I believe, for mobile network
operators that want to have some level of independence
when it comes to their RAN infrastructure to
lean into things like VRAN. I don't know if you
caught the news, but any further thoughts? No,
I didn't catch the news, but I also don't have
that many thoughts. I think in general, Europe
is a very different market. And it's good to
see Samsung having some success there because
they've had a lot of success in the US. And it's
great to see that they're replicating some of
that in Europe. Yeah, no, I agree. Hey, let's
go to your second topic. And you want to talk
about AT &T. And our POTUS recently criticized
AT &T for a bad conference call. But AT &T responded.
So you want to share your insights? Yeah. So
I very much did not participate in this conference
call. I don't know what happened, but I think
it was like a faith leaders conference call.
And he was saying that AT &T was the reason why
that conference call didn't work and there were
technical issues. But AT &T responded saying
that their network wasn't the problem and that,
and he said that he's the boss of. That if the
boss of AT &T could get involved, it would be
good because there's tens of thousands of people
on the line. But it's very unclear whether AT
&T was actually the reason why the call didn't
work or why they had to reschedule the call.
While they may have to reschedule the call and
that maybe we'll use a different carrier next
time. But AT &T said that it wasn't really their
technology that was a problem. So it's very unclear
what was behind that. tens of thousands of people
on any call, whether it's Zoom or AT &T or anything.
Those are always a challenge and maybe there
should be a platform for those kinds of things.
But yeah, it was really interesting to see AT
&T responding and the Trump calling them out
specifically. Yeah. Yeah. It's mind blowing.
The level of knowledge that our elected leadership
has. Networks peer. You have, we have ingress
and egress over the internet. private networks,
public networks. And so it's very difficult to
assign blame. Now, there are lots of monitoring
tools like Cisco's ThousandEyes has an internet
outage map. In fact, if our viewers and listeners
want to go hit it, just use the Googles and Google
ThousandEyes. And it's very informative and it
shows you the performance of the internet, basically.
But yeah, it's just another example. When I recall.
You know, the Facebook hearings when Mark Zuckerberg
was on Capitol Hill and some of the questions
that came from our elected officials, it just
blows your mind. It's okay. These are the folks
that are actually putting bills together and
voting on bills and that sort of thing. So yeah,
someone needs to educate the POTUS on how all
that plumbing and all that connectivity works.
But hey, with that, I'm going to go hit my third
and final topic. And I want to talk about LG.
And I found this to be a pretty interesting use
case. They're leaning into private 5G for a facility
in Tennessee that is the basis for their home
appliance manufacturing. And I found this really
incredible. So this is in a town that's about
an hour north of Nashville near the Kentucky
border on a road called Life's Good Way. So if
you know anything, LG stands for Lucky Gold Star.
And so there's a connection there and they've
named the street this. But what's amazing is
that this facility can produce a washing machine.
every 13 seconds like how can they do that how
do you think they can do that man it's magic
right you know what some they want to know something
interesting what i was supposed to go to that
facility um invited because and i almost went
because i was really excited about the private
5g aspect of this factory Yeah, that's the fact
that it's washers and dryers, but that it's very
highly technical factory, but also utilizing
private 5G. Unfortunately, I've just had so much
travel in the last month that I like I just couldn't
do it because I was it was the one week I was
home for the month and I wasn't going to try
and go to Tennessee for that. But yeah, I was
actually invited by LG to go and I would have
loved to make that a topic of my own. But because
I didn't go, I didn't really lean into it. But
yeah, it's cool that more and more companies
are leveraging private 5G for manufacturing.
A lot of it's to give the AGVs and other tools
and equipment access to the internet so they
can do AI onsite locally and also pipe in new
models and things like that. And what I've noticed
is... A lot of these companies that are doing
it are Korean. So we're seeing Hyundai do it
in Georgia. We're seeing LG doing it in Tennessee.
I'm sure Samsung is using private 5G in their
own installations in Korea. I think the Koreans
are definitely more forward -thinking in a lot
of ways. And I think a lot of companies could
be learning lessons from them. But that's my
input from this, other than the fact that I probably
should have been there and would have had cool
insights if I was there. I'm going to try to
get that rescheduled for you and I. But what's
really interesting is I read through this light
reading article, another light reading article,
they deployed that private 5G network a couple
of years ago. And because they found that their
250 access points weren't providing the deterministic
connectivity that's needed for many of those
use cases that you were just mentioning, like
AGVs and automated pools, and even the sort of
the backend sort of transportation and logistics
aspect. And at the end of the day, Typically
what I like to say, Wi -Fi and 5G are better
together. But when it comes to very deterministic
use cases, like robotics, like HEVs, where there's
no margin for error, or computer vision used
to inspect the final assembly and that sort of
thing, this is where 5G really shines. And I
love this use case. And, you know, that's funny
that I had no idea that you had been invited
by LG to do that. But I'll also mention before
I wrap up, if you remember, this was like four
or five years ago. Remember when you and I and
Patrick Morehead, our fearless leader, we published
a series of articles about the promise of 5G?
And I do recall that manufacturing automation
played an important role in some of the use cases.
And more importantly, when I looked at the carrier
set around the world, and we were calling first,
second, and third place winners, if you remember.
I called Korea as a leader, right? They were
very early in to not only deploying. And it may
not have been standalone initially in 2019 and
2020, but they were certainly very focused on
very discrete ease cases that demonstrated the
power of the low latency, the consistent throughput,
the encrypted aspects of that as well. And just
overall, the more deterministic capability that
5G delivers over Wi -Fi. So with that, my friend,
let's go to your third and final topic. And I
had caught this news as well. T -Mobile just
recently completed a pretty substantial expansion
in Florida, and you want to talk about that.
Yeah, it's a big deal. Two billion dollars in
one state. And basically, it's a realization
that Florida is a big opportunity for T -Mobile,
but also lots of people visit Florida from across
the country. So it's important for them to have
good coverage there. They invested two billion
dollars. which will now improve coverage for
22 million Floridians and support emergency response
systems, smart city initiatives. But also, the
project involved 1 ,282 new or retained sites
from the merger with Sprint, around 1 ,350 sites
upgraded across the state, and hardening 1 ,375
states to improve emergency response and disaster
recovery, which in Florida is a big deal. Another
interesting stat is that average statewide 5G
download speeds are now 266 megabytes per second,
which is a 216 increase since 2021 and nearly
100 % of Floridians are now covered by T -Mobile
5G network, the company claims. And yeah, it's
they're definitely improving the network experience
and it can translate to better customer outcomes
and also better profits and user experiences
for its consumer and enterprise customers. Looking
at the new coverage map, it looks like a lot
of ultracapacity along the coasts, and then a
ton of it near Orlando. And look at it, like
most of the state is actually ultracapacity now
compared to what it used to be, where it was
just along the water. Now, I would say just looking
at it, it's 80 % ultracapacity and then very
little extended range LTE and a few satellite
spots. So they're incorporating satellite. The
Everglades looks like it's satellite and some
parts near Tallahassee. But for the most part,
the state's pretty much deep purple with a few
hints of magenta, which is lower frequency stuff.
And they're already doing private networks deployments
in Miller Electric. They're doing some ANS stuff
for autonomous bus -shaped shuttles. There's
all kinds of things that they're doing to advance.
technology for the state. And I think I don't
have any plans of going to Florida anytime soon.
I know you have a place there, so you'll probably
benefit from this. But yeah, it's great. I would
love to see more of this, but $2 billion is a
lot to invest in just one state. It really is.
And when you think about Florida and you think
about the tourism industry there, you think about
Orlando where you've got Disney World and the
ability to use a very highly performant 5G network
to do things like autonomous shuttle. sort of
navigation. I've seen that demonstration at Peachtree
Corners in Georgia where T -Mobile has a proof
of concept lab called the Curiosity Lab. But
yeah, and then if you just look at also the enterprise
applications, you have the Port of Miami as well.
It's a big port. And as you and I know, 5G has
been a poster child use case for port operations
and that sort of thing. I would like to see more
coverage in the Florida Keys where I live in
Isla Mirada. I think there's a lot of opportunity
down there as well. I'll be fishing with my brother
and his two sons later this month. And not that
you necessarily need connectivity when you're
out in the ocean because you're focused on catching
fish. But I will tell you, I use an app that
requires connectivity to identify fish to make
sure that whatever you're about to land in the
boat is not going to kill you or sting you. be
endangered or that sort of thing. So I think
there would be an opportunity for improving connectivity.
And that's where maybe T -Mobile's partnership
with Starlink can come into play. But I love
that, man. My second home. Can't wait to be there
in a few weeks. I know you're in Sonoma this
week. Any travel coming up for you after that?
You're going to be with Samsung, right? I will
be at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked. on Wednesday when
it's announced. I'll probably be traveling that
Thursday. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it
to do the podcast that day, but maybe on Friday,
we'll see. I'm going to probably be driving to
back down to San Diego on Saturday. That's the
situation, but I'll have all the news for the
next podcast around all the upcoming Galaxy foldables.
Cool. I know our viewers and listeners will be
interested in that. I don't have any business
travel for the month of July, like I mentioned.
I'm going to go fish with my brother and his
kids. Enjoy. Yeah, and then just take some needed
time off. But hey, my friend, it's been another
great podcast. Before we end it, though, let's
wish our viewers and listeners a very happy 4th
of July. We're getting a lot of rain in Bastrop,
Texas today. I'm hoping that rain breaks for
tomorrow. Why don't you take us home, Anshul?
Absolutely. We hope our viewers and listeners
found this week's topics interesting. If anyone
would like to provide insights for a specific
5G topic for a future podcast, please reach out
to us on social media. Will is at WillTownTech
and I'm at OnShellSide. We hope you have a great
4th of July weekend and don't forget to rate
and subscribe.